Most concepts of environmental policy do not consider adequately the complexity of nature and society. While neoclassical economics seems to fall into the trap of steering illusion, evolutionary economic concepts that consider societal complexity are too optimistic about the favours of...

Obstacles to clean technology development, innovation and diffusion are not only related to the lack of internalisation of environmental externalities in production costs, as defended by traditional environmental economics. Empirical studies show that many other obstacles prevent these...

In this paper, I discuss, from a policy perspective, the relation between environmental institutions and transaction costs. I stress the importance of environmental institutions in providing decisive information, i.e. information that induces changes in behaviour, and thereby facilitates...

A sustainable economy requires a change in the current path of economic development. The political and societal task is a transition to a new path consisting of more environmentally friendly technologies, products and consumption patterns. Environmentally beneficial technological innovations are...

Although the need for new systems of production and consumption is constantly stressed in policy discussions, the sustainable consumption concept has not been largely translated into practice. The efforts of environmental policy makers to pay more attention to the consumption side are still...

Sustainable development, on a local level, requires incentives whose comprehension and identification depend on various stakes and the involvement of socio-economic actors. The complexity of the task could not be compounded without the aid of modern decision-methods such as Multi-Criteria...

Theoritically, spatially targeted environmental policies are considered optimal, since economic agents tune their efforts according to their environment. But this advantage can be undermined by the high cost of information. We posit that it is possible to reduce the spatial scale and...

The impact of environmental policy on international trade has received a great deal of attention over the decades. Theory predicts that the relative level of a country's environmental policy, technology, and factor endowments will jointly determine international trade and specialisation. This...

As the debate about the meaning of sustainable development matures, the links between environmental and social sustainability are becoming clearer. Environmental degradation frequently leads to social instability and vice-versa. Recent studies of past civilizations show a disturbing and...

Nonpoint pollution from agriculture is an emerging issue in the environmental policy of the European Union. Dynamic optimisation techniques are important in nonpoint pollution, and neglect of dynamic aspects may seriously mislead the proper design of policy measures. This paper presents an...